Frosticus

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Well, to be on a different take on this, somewhat, my experience pre-i15's Dom buff was shaky except with my Plant/Psi. I'm not sure pre-i15 if I just wasn't skilled enough in my attempts to really understand Dominator's capabilities.

That being said, my Plant/Psi was a ton of fun, got her to level 26. However, I've only pulled her out a few times now and the increase on the recharge of the psi powers makes me sad. I enjoyed the shorter recharge times of the psi powers compared to the other power sets. Since the recharge times have increased, I've found myself at a somewhat loss with her. I'm happy to have an overall damage boost to the AT, but when I triggered Domination, it felt great. Quick attacks with higher damage and harder controls? She was a blast! Now, I just feel somewhat blah'd by the whole thing and wonder if I'll be able to get back into her. Might just take me time to get back to that spot.

So yes, happy in the overall spectrum of things, just saddened by the higher recharge values for Psi Assault.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, but now Domination can be saved to be used for what it's meant.... to hold the hard targets.

Before it was used when available by myself because I couldn't stand the pew-pew low damage.

Now I actually feel like I can contend in DPS without needing to pop Domination and get tons of IO global rech.

[/ QUOTE ]

I find I need domination to pop asap for the endurance now. I'm not convinced that is so much better than needing it for the extra damage before.

Neither dominator state has provided an environment where I felt encouraged, or even able, to use domination for its main purpose - increased control.

Also recharge is just as important as before. In some cases more important.

qr

lower controller damage cap to 300%. It is currently too high in conjunction with containment.

This will have minimal impact on the vast majority of solo controllers while ensuring that their team damage is not infringing upon defenders in high buff scenarios.

I'd also find a way to make defender buff/debuff scale up relative to the number of teammates so that it is clearly better in teams that all the other support AT's. Basically a small scaling powerboost effect.

Whatever extra damage corrs do outside of their buff/debuff:damage ratio would quickly disappear relative to defenders if their buff/debuff increased in strength as teams size did.

If Defs are intended to be the "team" AT then make that intention a clear reality.

I also have a solution to address their solo'ing woes a bit, but admittedly it could result in some whines from people that can't grasp the idea of varying performance relative to team size. (which in such a casual game, might be a lot)

What do these three things have in common:
Fullauto
One thousand cuts
TF+ET


At least 4 camera spins.

Roll a plant dom. You'll be way more useful for all the rest of the missions and you can still contribute to the sleepy time action. Though the plant one does notify, but otherwise it is good range, big aoe, same rech as masshyp and also deals no damage so won't interfere with anyone else using sleep.

Most people forget that plant has the second best aoe sleep power cause it doesn't need it for anything.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The blaster forums were stunned when Castle brought up the potential to change Defiance. The blaster community had pretty much accepted their state of affairs. Naturally, Castle's post re-invigorated conversation, but before his request for input, blasters had been pretty quiet (about AT wide changes) since after ED and I6. Some of us (rather foolishly or ignorantly, in hindsight), didn't even realize there was a problem, thinking the extra fast kill speed made up for the (probably more often than we realized) occasional extra defeat.

[/ QUOTE ]

What's more, I think if there was any consensus at all, we all agreed that what should happen to blasters next was a review of blaster secondary sets. Ironically, secondary powersets were probably the least affected by the I11 blaster changes. Personally, I had stopped thinking about blaster improvements because I had come to believe that stalkers and dominators (and maybe peacebringers) deserved more attention, and I figured the devs felt the same.

To be honest, I was not surprised to learn that blasters on the whole were performing much worse than most people believed. But even I was completely surprised to learn that even powerset combinations like Ice/Energy - how do you die playing Ice/Energy? - were underperforming, probably because of debt. I was sufficiently stunned that I had to ask the question three times worded in three different ways to make sure I wasn't misunderstanding the answer.

(Also, there are still things the devs are not allowed to tell me about the datamining process, so I couldn't get 100% straight answers to all my questions).

[/ QUOTE ]

Every pug I always played on the first character to die when things went a little bit wrong... blasters..

First character to die just randomly even when things were going fine... blasters.

Regardless of the powerset. If they played at all aggressively they always face-planted first. Even st specialized ones, because those builds usually had them going into melee range and random spillover agro/damage always dropped them first.

Crap even when the troller would open with flashfire and miss half the spawn the blaster would die first (that was a joke, just for clarity)

They still do, but I guess it is less enough now to be acceptable.

I can't say I was surprised at all that they got looked at. Dom's had just been buffed in I8 and while obviously still not up to par it would be too soon to go after them again in any meaningful way. Stalkers were hated due to their pvp dominance. The flames that ensued even mentioning improvements to stalkers were visious and PBs are too rare to be high up on the priority list.

Blasters - one of the most popular AT's in the game that pretty much needed a pocket rezzer on teams.

I mean I can breeze through pretty much anything in this game with any AT/combo, but even I felt the wall at about lvl 34 with my ice/elec and that is one of the safer and more powerful combos. I happened to like the "wall" but it was clear how it would eat most people alive. And did.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Just a personal pet peeve when people misquote so they can one up

[/ QUOTE ]
I think you misunderstand. You were saying you believed that blasters were whining and thus got attention (i.e., new defiance). That is not the case. You are not being one-upped, but an attempt is being made to educate. You should consider believing something different about that time period.

The blaster forums were stunned when Castle brought up the potential to change Defiance. The blaster community had pretty much accepted their state of affairs. Naturally, Castle's post re-invigorated conversation, but before his request for input, blasters had been pretty quiet (about AT wide changes) since after ED and I6. Some of us (rather foolishly or ignorantly, in hindsight), didn't even realize there was a problem, thinking the extra fast kill speed made up for the (probably more often than we realized) occasional extra defeat.

[/ QUOTE ]

OMG, it was a sarcastic response. I was there when they were changed, I remember all the arguments, counter arguments, dev datamining. Everything that was publicly released anyway. Believe it or not other people were there too and probably remember it. They might make jokes about it too.

How do you guys take a comment like:
"I personally think blasters as a whole overstated their problems and whined themselves right into new defiance. In any event the dev's did not agree that Lrn2ply was sufficient advice. "

And read it as serious is beyond me. Cause it has always mattered soooo much when a few forum posters [censored] about their crappy builds... Lrn2ply is a common statement out of PS with regard to player issues... I think it is actually in the EULA.

Sometimes all one can do is laugh.

sigh... No worries, I didn't clearly show that I was joking and plenty of people say ridiculous things and believe them. I sometimes make the assumption that people involved in the thread have a better chance of taking things in context, but it has bit me more than once now. People seem to struggle with it when directly responding to a person, I should stop being surprised when it happens from a bystander. My assumptions have made an [censored]-out-of-me.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
"Actually" makes it sound like a contradiction and then you proceed to just expand on what I've been saying in this thread.

[/ QUOTE ]

The "Actually" refers to the notion that Fire was considered superior on paper. It always had been up to that point, but in the months leading up to the Fire changes that significantly reversed. It wasn't so much that experience trumped the numerical analysis as it was the numerical analysis agreed with experience (by that point) in this case.

[/ QUOTE ]

Cool, can't say I ever saw any of these analysis on the public forums. I'm glad it happened though, for the exact reasons I've been saying in this thread.

Hmm, if you have some of this in your time capsule of info you should dig it up. It would be interesting to see how the data was run that suddenly yielded such different results than before.

[ QUOTE ]

My recollection is that I was somewhat surprised to discover that while Fire was always assumed to be the AoE king, it seems no one actually tried to compare Fire to AR because the presumption was that AR's performance was so low it wasn't worth bothering. Furthermore, while Fire did have very good DPA no one (that I'm aware of) did an analysis of just how much recharge was required to fill a chain with Fire's top DPA attacks. It was always presumed that attack chains for reasonable builds were always "full" so there was no need.

[/ QUOTE ]
The aoe performance still remains difficult to quantify across the sets. It makes a lot of assumptions that are easily shot down from situation to situation, while generally working under the other presumption that the secondary is barely used. In the case of /mm (and others) that can lead to some pretty lopsided results between actual performance compared to paper analysis.

That said, back then and now fire still had the highest aoe potential, just that the prevailing notion was (and is) that Rain of Fire is generally discounted. It is bad practice to throw out a chunk of data just because popular belief says it is difficult to leverage (even though it is for blasters).

I've never seen an AoE breakdown of blasters that was more useful than an interesting conversation piece. If you know of a good one out there, do share.

I know some people were crunching the numbers for the relative performance of the "top" blaster sets and what was needed to make them optimal. They just might not have shared it with the pve community at the time (I know I didn't share any of the test results, but that was back when pvp was srs bsns). However, "filling" a chain with Fire's top DPA attacks back then (blaze, blast, fireball) wasn't happening without some pauses.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I personally think blasters as a whole overstated their problems and whined themselves right into new defiance. In any event the dev's did not agree that Lrn2ply was sufficient advice. At the time most people were arguing that fire was fine.

[/ QUOTE ]

The I11 changes were datamining driven. When the devs ran their performance stats across the game, they discovered that when you look at the average levelling rate and reward earning rates (influence, drops, etc) of all players for each level range, and compare that average to the average levelling and earning rates of each blaster powerset combination (i.e. all energy/energy blasters, all fire/dev blasters, all ice/elec blasters) it was discovered that *all* of those combinations were lower than the overall average. By double-digit percentages in all cases. Even Ice/Ice, even Fire/Energy: all of them. I was also told that that situation was *unique*: there was no other archetype for which you could make that statement. That is what made blasters the high priority action item at that time.

Blasters had been "whining" about various things since I1, and their complaints peaked around I5. By I11, they were actually practically non-existent (at the time that blasters were being worked on, there were more complaints about Kheldians, Tankers, Stalkers, and Dominators in the public forums).

Whether Blasters overstated their problems is somewhat moot, as Castle determined on his own that a) blasters of all powerset combinations were underperforming the playerbase as a whole by significant amounts and b) that underperformance was partially due to being killed and under debt more often, and c) defiance 1.0 was probably encouraging more risk-taking than the archetype was designed to handle for the average CoX player. All of the player feedback related to the changes were details fit into that basic framework already established.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you'd just quoted one more sentence rather than snipping what I said this entire last passage could have been avoided. It was pretty obvious I was speaking from a subjective standpoint with things like:
"I personally think"
"devs did not agree (with me) that lrn2ply was sufficient"
"People were saying fire was fine, BUT evidently that was NOT the case".
(Just a personal pet peeve when people misquote so they can one up)

You are actually being quite pleasant right now though, so I'll just say thank you for sharing the info.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I plan every build meticulously, min/maxing every character while trying to stick to my original idea. I just don't use IO's to do it, because I don't want to deal with the pursuit of "lewtz" in this game.

[/ QUOTE ]

Min/Maxing without going through the process of min/maxing. Interesting.


[/ QUOTE ]

You almost understood me, but didn't quite get there. I min/max without using IO sets. You know, the way people did before IO sets were added to the game? IO Sets were supposed to be optional, remember? Trust me, I am fully aware of the fact that my characters are not mathematically maxed out to what is possible in the game at this time. I don't care. They ARE min/maxed to the level required by the content, which did not get rebalanced by the addition of IO sets. And their performance is quite satisfactory in my opinion.

It boils down to us playing the game in different ways. I have never embraced the IO system (and never will until the Devs force me to by making them mandatory via content design). You have. Neither is "right" or "wrong". Just different.

But more on topic: I created a plant/fire to run with a friend's new SoA the other day. Due to work schedules we wound up soloing quite a bit. I went 1-14 mostly solo and didn't experience the misery you describe at all. Quite the opposite. The character is very strong. Does he have End issues? You bet. But it's by no means unmanageable. But then, I also have leveled quite a few Brutes, so maybe my tolerance level for that sort of thing is high.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'd argue that the definition of min/maxing was changed in this game with the introduction of IO's.

I might "min/max" my honda civic with a new exhaust and some rims, but I wouldn't go up and decry myself as a min/maxer to a Formula race team.

Anyway, I've leveled up quite a few brutes, I've done EM, SS, Stone, and Fire to at least post stamina. They have incredible endurance efficiency. They do some of the highest dpe in the entire game in the early levels and it doesn't change much as they level. In early levels I get a head of fury and then shut off my shields and just 1-2 shot everything in my path. Even new /nrg doms aren't like that, and /fire is no where near that.

AT's with low damage scalars benefit more in the early levels because damage modifiers don't fully kick in until the late teens. Brutes, who have a low modifier and heaps of +dam level ridiculously easy in early game. Old doms that actually used domination enjoyed this too, but not to the same extent.

As for my experiences with old and new /fiery. All I can say is that I immediatley got hooked on old /fire and rocketed my earth/fire dom up to 50. It was one of the only toons I've leveled straight up without logging in others. New fire is just horrid (for me) now. If I miss with incin and/or fireblast they take forever to cycle and I just stand their spamming broken low damage flares.

Like I said, I have high hopes for Earth Assault. If it has all the hammers and stone fist and retains their Damage Scales (ie not nerfed like /elec was) then I suspect I'll enjoy it quite a bit. It will hit hard like /nrg, but be melee focused. That could be fun.

[ QUOTE ]
I've been looking at CoD. It appears, as another posted stated, that stone and fossil could get enhanced. There is no text saying :'[Ignores Enhancements & Buffs] [Non-resistable]' except for the knockback res.

Quicksand, the minion pet, also does not have the text attached to the -def portion, but maybe because it is a pet it has a different mechanic.

BTW, can I assume you tried the enzyme in QS?

[/ QUOTE ]

Ya I put two of them into my earth/fire dom back in i11? when I was specing it for pvp. I enjoyed playing with people in the sandbox and figured I'd make it go from good to awesome. I had hopes the 2 of them would push it up to -39% def, which would have let me fight much more effectively against rads (very popular at the time).

Unfortunately it did nothing and we tested it using the in game attribute monitors. Each time it put him down to -22% def (he had 3% for cj).

I was sad cause so many other builds get to "cheat" with HO's.

"Actually" makes it sound like a contradiction and then you proceed to just expand on what I've been saying in this thread.

Good info though. You may well have been the Player that led to the "player feedback" comment in the patch notes. I just recall what the pvp crunchers were doing at the time. Fire was numerically superior to other sets, but in practice it wasn't enough to warrant it being used in high end pvp when compared to ice, which had comparable st damage, better secondary effects and a lot more range.

pvp != pve, but I imagine what they knew held true in pve at that time as well.

I personally think blasters as a whole overstated their problems and whined themselves right into new defiance. In any event the dev's did not agree that Lrn2ply was sufficient advice. At the time most people were arguing that fire was fine. That evidently wasn't the case though. Like you say, fire has probably benefited the least from new defiance, in fact the longer cast on fireblast kinda sucks.

TL;DR version of both our posts: Fire is fine.

[ QUOTE ]
Will it buff -def for say stone prison or fossilize?

[/ QUOTE ]

Can't speak for fossilze or stone prison, but I know Enzyme does NOT work in quicksand to increase the -def. It is unenhanceable.

[ QUOTE ]
I plan every build meticulously, min/maxing every character while trying to stick to my original idea. I just don't use IO's to do it, because I don't want to deal with the pursuit of "lewtz" in this game.

[/ QUOTE ]

Min/Maxing without going through the process of min/maxing. Interesting.

In general:
I don't like my earth/fire anymore, but I don't fully blame Castle for that. I just hate flares and now it is like every 2nd attack I do.

I leveled a plant/fire the other day to 16 and it was brutal. Every time I missed I wanted to /quit. For me /fire is now slow and boring.

Tried out an earth/nrg and a fire/nrg, that secondary is way better now.

I'd like to level a /psi, but it isn't really good at anything now. It seems fine, but I really like when I play a toon that is at least really good at one aspect.

I had started an ice/elec right before the changes, but now /elec is being punished for having buildup and needs it just to keep up with /nrg. If thunderstrike did more damage that POWERBURST I'd continue with it, but /nrg is just so much better than /elec now.

The Primaries are awesome with the increased damage mod, but for the two assault sets I was most interested in (fire and elec) I would much rather they were left alone and just got the modifier increase rather than screwing around with the individual powers.

The vast majority of "happy" people seem to be talking about /nrg in every thread. It is a lot better, I just hate having virtually no aoe damage. I'd play a stalker for that.

I'm really hoping Sunstorm comes through with Earth Assault.

[ QUOTE ]
Fire/ice = yay!

[/ QUOTE ]

I enjoyed that combo quite a bit. Mostly because blaster shiver is amazing and lets you use rain of fire like corruptors do.

12.07.06 Patch notes
[ QUOTE ]


Blaster Improvements:

* These changes are all aimed towards addressing sets based on feedback from players. These changes also affect Defender and Corruptor versions of these powers where applicable.

Blaster Fire Manipulation: Ring of Fire: Increased overall damage. Damage ticks are now faster, as well. Recharge was increased to 6 seconds.

* Blaster Fire Manipulation: Fire Sword: Bonus damage increased.
* Blaster Fire Manipulation: Combustion: Bonus damage increased.
* Blaster Fire Manipulation: Fire Sword Circle: Bonus damage increased.
* Blaster Fire Blast Powerset: Bonus damage increased by 50% for all appropriate powers.
* Blaster Fire Blast: Blaze: Increased Range to 40'
* Assault Rifle Ignite: Increased Range to 40'
* Energy Blast Power Burst: Increased Range to 40'
* Radiation Attack Cosmic Burst: Increased Range to 40'
* Sonic Attack Shout: Increased Range to 40'
* Blaster Devices Taser: Increased Range to 20'
* Blaster Devices Smoke Grenade: No longer requires a 'to hit' check for the Perception Debuff. The other effects of the power still require a successful to hit check.
* Blaster Archery Fistful of Arrows: corrected an issue which could prevent the power from damaging foes.
* Blaster Archery Blazing Arrow: corrected an issue that could limit the DoT portion of the power from doing more than one tick of damage.
* Blaster Assault Rifle Flamethrower: Range increased slightly and recharge time changed so it now matches the range and recharge of the Corruptor version of this power.
* Blaster Electrical Blast Aim should now display the proper look, and match the other powers in the power set.

[/ QUOTE ]

It was fueled by players specifically saying Fire was not performing well enough above the other sets relative to its total lack of mitigation.

It was a situation where feel and experience trumps paper because even on paper fire was still better. I'm inclined to believe that even though the game has changed, it hasn't changed enough to make the reason for the fire buffs invalid.

Buffing the dot on fire was the ideal solution to address the issue of fire not doing enough damage relative to other attack sets because it allowed them to keep the set very close to where it originally was from a "burst" st/aoe perspective so that they weren't suddenly blowing through minions/luts significantly faster than before.

At the same time it allowed the set to have much better performance in protracted battles. This is vital because where other sets gain solid mitigation over time through kbs/slows/-tohit/stuns and w/e else Fire does not. It is over time that fire needs to be noticeably more damaging. Buffing the dot allowed them to address that issue, without giving them OPd upfront damage.

From another perspective:
Take ice blast and pretend it could only stack 3 of its -rech/slow debuffs.
That is 60% -rech. If a boss was attacking every 4 seconds for 500 damage (125dps) the ice blaster would quickly reduce that to every 10 seconds (50dps).
How much faster should Fire kill that target to be of about the same relative strength?

If said ice blaster would experience death after 24 seconds (1,200 hp/50dps) and the fire blaster would be killed in 10 seconds (12 sec due to atttack rate) vs the same foe how much damage should fire do to be equally viable?

Every blast set has mitigation tools that range from better than fire to exceedingly better than fire. I just used ice because the math is really easy for it.

[ QUOTE ]
I think i was the first to post on the training room patch notes that this would royally [censored] small servers... i guess they missed that memo.. next time ill put the right cover sheet on it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ah! Yeah. It's just we're putting new coversheets on all the TPS reports before they go out now. So if you could go ahead and try to remember to do that from now on, that'd be great. All right!

[ QUOTE ]
I would like this set:

1 - Seismic Smash (Standard Seismic Smash)
2 - Strong Seismic Smash (Seismic Smash x5 in power)
4 - Flurry of Seismic Smash (a chain of seismic smashes in a cone)
10 - Rock Rage (Like Rage and Granite Armor put together but no -damage debuff)
16 - Earth's Embrace
20 - Super Seismic Smash (Targeted Aoe of Seismic Smash)
28 - Rock Armor
35 - Earth Shattering Seismic Smash (1 hit kill to anything Seismic Smash, kinda like a non aoe boom)
38 - Animate Stone

Yes i understand that you could then have 2 animate stones, each with a seismic smash their own. my provisioned powerset would have great melee capability and great utility, and before anyone cries nerf nao, its completely balanced balanced in every way.

[/ QUOTE ]

hmm no seismic smash damage aura. Proly wouldn't play it then.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Without dot Fire would be a very pedestrian set. Bested easily in damage by ice and psy. And probably right in there with arch and eng. But of course with no mitigation whatsoever.

[/ QUOTE ]

I know we're mostly talking about ST DPS here, but I think statements like that might be taken the wrong way for ppl skipping ahead. Fire still kicks Ice & Psy's butts for AoE. Even w/o the DoT, I think Fire would be almost balanced w/the other sets (that have more mitigation/utility) considering its ST & AoE potential (and remember, you'll likely only need 2 of the T1~3 blasts if you combine w/your secondary, so you can just drop FBlast). Of course, that means w/DoT, Fire is... um, perfectly balanced. Yeah, that's the ticket.

[/ QUOTE ]

So what secondary are we now shoehorning the player into? Is the st immobs you are talking about replacing Fireblast with, or one of the melee attacks? What is the dpa when you add in a second or two to close to melee?

You're absolutely right, without proc dot fire's aoe would still be fine. That's because only ONE power has proc dot from it's aoe's (excluded true nukes).

With no dot on Fireball:

Code:[/color]

---

Power	Dam	DPA	Cast	5	10	16	End	DPE	5	10	16

Fistful	56.9	43.1	1.3	215.5	431.1	na	8.5	6.7	33.4	66.7	na

Explo	56.3	28.4	2.0	142.2	284.3	454.9	15.2	3.7	18.5	37.0	59.3

RoA	150.2	35.6	4.2	177.8	355.6	568.9	20.8	7.2	36.1	72.2	115.5

											

Buck	56.9	30.8	1.9	153.8	307.6	na	10.2	5.6	27.9	55.8	na

M30	56.3	30.4	1.9	152.2	304.3	486.9	15.2	3.7	18.5	37.0	59.3

Flame	121.1	32.7	3.7	163.6	327.3	na	23.9	5.1	25.3	50.7	na

F Auto	178.6	28.8	6.2	144.0	288.0	na	15.6	11.4	57.2	114.5	na

											

B Light	63.8	48.3	1.3	241.7	483.3	773.3	15.2	4.2	21.0	42.0	67.2

Circuit	56.3	17.8	3.2	88.8	177.6	284.2	15.6	3.6	18.0	36.1	57.7

											

E Torr	60.1	45.5	1.3	227.7	455.3	na	11.9	5.1	25.3	50.5	na

Explos	56.3	30.4	1.9	152.2	304.3	486.9	15.2	3.7	18.5	37.0	59.3

											

Frost B	87.6	30.2	2.9	151.0	302.1	na	15.2	5.8	28.8	57.6	na

I Storm	116.8	51.9	2.3	259.6	519.1	830.6	15.6	7.5	37.4	74.9	119.8

											

Psy N	55.7	22.2	2.5	111.0	221.9	355.1	18.5	3.0	15.1	30.1	48.2

											

Howl	50.7	20.2	2.5	101.0	202.0	na	10.2	5.0	24.9	49.7	na

Shock	40.0	16.8	2.4	84.0	168.1	na	11.9	3.4	16.8	33.6	na

											

Ehaze	84.5	33.7	2.5	168.3	336.7	na	15.2	5.6	27.8	55.6	na

Nuet	56.3	30.4	1.9	152.2	304.3	486.9	15.2	3.7	18.5	37.0	59.3

Irrad	62.6	47.4	1.3	237.1	474.2	758.8	18.5	3.4	16.9	33.8	54.1

											

F ball	56.3	47.4	1.2	237.0	473.9	758.2	15.2	3.7	18.5	37.0	59.3

breath	109.8	37.9	2.9	189.3	378.6	na	15.2	7.2	36.1	72.2	na

RoF	125.1	55.6	2.3	278.0	556.0	889.6	15.2	8.2	41.2	82.3	131.7



  

---

It's better, but I'm not seeing anything more than a few percentage points better than other sets. Even then it is Rain of Fire doing a lot of the leg work, which few fire blasters even take for various reasons.

The AoE output of Fire is not really hit very hard by the removal of proc dot.

If for w/e reason they pulled all the proc dot from Fire it would be a decent st set and a solid aoe set. With absolutely no mitigation. It would still be good because only one other set does both categories well (Arch). But arch would be about as good as it with more mitigation, more range, and similar endurance efficiency.

Middle of the road st, with good aoe doesn't sound like Fire to me. Or at least not how it has typically been represented in every game I've ever played.

At some point someone must have thought the exact opposite of you cause they went ahead and specifically added more dot damage to the set. 1.5x as much to each power that had proc dot.

Using No Dot for Fire a chain of: *dot included on flares
Blaze>Blast>flare>repeat (229% rech in Blaze)

yields
First run (cold) - 122.84 dps
Second run (moderate defiance) -137.64 dps
Third run (hot) - 148.83 dps

*Once it is "hot" the defiance buff is constant at 48.4% for each attack, so while there might be a better defiance sequence for fire, the chain I gave would be what I'd use to kill things in game because of front loading my damage.

Still solid, but nothing to write home about.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

I'd argue that if (and I agree sometimes it does) the stronger buff/debuff is resulting in overkill then it is just as likely that scourge is as well.

If we can dismiss stronger buff/debuff as creating unnecessary damage, then it seems only logical that actual extra damage could just as easily be unnecessary. Especially given the back loaded nature of scourge inherently leading to overkill.

[/ QUOTE ]

I would disagree with your use of sometimes. I believe frequently is more accurate. In most actual play situations the differences between controller, corruptor, and defender buffs/debuffs is so small that most teams aren't aware that there's a difference.

I'd venture to say that for teams overkill is the norm rather than the exception. Players are very much aware when they "corpse blast" or when a team mate "kill steals" by defeating targets first. This is one reason that people dislike animations over 2 seconds and many people want the devs to base damage not only on end costs and recharge times but by factoring animation times in as well.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well sure, most people have no idea what the buffs and debuffs are doing, they just feel stronger and kill faster. If you look at the most popular AT's in the game (blaster, scrap, brute, MM) it is pretty obvious that many/most players have no idea about the finer side of the battle.

That doesn't equate to the difference being absent though.

"Corpse blasting" as a result of long animations is imo an entirely different discussion than w/e value is assigned to potential overkill as a result of too much buff/debuff. It is almost entirely attributable to long cast times on some powers. IME when you can corpse blast yourself is when overkill is a factor. That isn't all that common though.

ie Fire breath miraculously scourges all targets and they fall over during the animation of fireball. (actually this can happen fairly often with Rain of fire going hehe, but that attack is one of a kind).

Honestly, I'm not sure what to even say. I've played on steam-rolling defender teams and steam-rolling corr teams. Saying they both go through all content like a hot knife through butter is an understatement. Whatever difference exists at that level is virtually indiscernible short of fraps reviewing the material.

Their team performance is not lacking in the least. Some sets need to solo better, some solo fine. I'm still hearing more specifics warranting individual set revision than an entire AT wide adjustment (not that I'm opposed to the latter).

[ QUOTE ]
Honestly, I still don't think that the additional DoT damage is the biggest factor in Fire's incredible performance. It wouldn't be too hard to simply remove that from the calculation and use only the base damage numbers in order to illustrate that Fire just has DPA that is simply that awesome. It's not the fact that Fire does so much damage with its attacks. It's that Fire does so much damage and takes up so little time to do it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Don't get me wrong, fire is dang good. Blaze is still the best attack blasters get even without dot.

Rather than me continuing to pooh pooh the great work you are doing I'll contribute something:

Fire w/ no dot
*Flare is 100% guaranteed dot, so included
Code:[/color]

---

Tier 1	dam	DPA	DPE

C bolt	62.6	52.7	12.0

P dart	62.6	52.7	12.0

P bolt	62.6	52.7	12.0

I bolt	62.6	52.7	12.0

Snap	52.6	44.3	14.9

Shriek	52.6	44.3	12.0

Burst	67.5	56.8	13.0

N bolt	37.5	31.6	12.0

Flare	63.2	53.2	17.1

  

---

Code:[/color]

---

Tier 2	dam	DPA	DPE

L bolt	102.6	55.5	12.0

M blast	102.6	55.5	12.0

P blast	102.6	55.5	12.0

I blast	102.6	55.5	12.0

Aimed	82.6	44.6	15.9

Scream	91.2	49.3	13.3

Slug	102.6	55.5	12.0

X ray	62.6	33.8	12.0

F blast	62.6	33.8	12.0

  

---

Code:[/color]

---

Tier 3	dam	DPA	DPE

L bolt	na	na	na

TK 	122.6	103.2	12.0

P burst	132.6	66.3	12.8

BiB	142.6	108.0	11.0

Blazing	161.7	81.7	15.9

Shout	132.6	45.7	12.1

Ignite	283.6	67.1	54.5

Cosmic	132.6	59.6	12.8

Blaze	132.6	111.6	12.8



  

---

Blaze is still a hero, but tk blast and BiB are right there with it. Flares is avg with 6 of the 9 sets (included rad blast too) pretty much the same. Fire blast is a dog. Turning it into a 1.85 cast for defiance hurt this power a lot.

The DPE on blaze and Fblast are avg, while flares is quite good.

Without dot Fire would be a very pedestrian set. Bested easily in damage by ice and psy. And probably right in there with arch and eng. But of course with no mitigation whatsoever.

IME it is definitely the dot (especially for blasters with slow FireBlast) that makes the set shine.

[ QUOTE ]


1: Hold, stun, and confuse are 100%, perfect mitigation when they hit. The knockdown patches of Ice Slick, FR, and earthquake are perfect mitigation. Controllers bring these to the table: you don't need defensive buffs when the enemies aren't able to hit back.

2: Defender damage is comparable to controller damage pre-pets. once pets are involved, defenders aren't even close. All pets except imps ALSO add more control to the team- more mitigation and more offense, all in one.

3: Controller buff/debuff capability is often on par with defenders. Defender blasts may get extra debuff abilities, but ice control has slow/-recharge, earth has heavy defense debuffs, and fire has massive damage.

There is really nothing a defender brings to a team that a controller can't do better, including protecting the entire team while increasing the damage output of the entire team.

[/ QUOTE ]

1. It works the other way too, with enough buff/debuff you require next to no control at which point additional aoe damage is "better"

2. What controller pets are so awesome that they turn the tide this much in team play? I agree the pets are killer solo, but imps vaporize in teams, block people, or over-agro, stoney/JF are st, the plant pet still seems to suck, Singy is more control (see point #1). That leaves phantasm and PA. With multiple targets PA encounters significant heal-back, heck of a control tool though in big teams. Phant is ok.

3. I agree, they are different. Defs add direct damage, trollers add additional mitigation and generally less direct-aoe damage.

I can tell you right now my fire/storm troller is a friggin beast (even post LS nerf ) Huge damage, great control. Probably my fastest solo toon (have scrappers, blasters, corrs, brute) and no slouch in teams either. My personal damage is through the roof.

It can't touch what my storm/sonic does in teams though. I hit freezing rain+howl and everything falls over seconds later from buffing my teams aoe damage so much. AV's disintegrate. The fastest Katie/ITF/RSF runs I've personally done have always been with my storm/son.

I know that is sonic doing a lot of the leg work, but I don't see how that is any different than citing fire being massive for damage.

So with regard to you last comment, I disagree.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
fulcrum shift, speed boost, and siphon speed are identical for both ATs

[/ QUOTE ]

Missed this earlier on the thread.

Fulkrum Shift is not identical on both ATs, the corruptor debuffs 20% dmg and buffs 40% damage while the defender is 25%/50%, mind you, either can easily take anyone to the damage caps with enough foes.

Speed boost and siphon speed, yea those two are basically the same, defender version of siphon speed has a stronger -speed debuff but it's not like anyone cares about that debuff anyways.

[/ QUOTE ]
the difference between a Defender Fulcrum Shift and corruptor fulcrum shift is only a 10% buff.

Defender radiates one +50% from themselves and +25% per foe up to 10.
Corruptor radiates one +40% from themselves and +25% per foe up to 10.

When the numbers scale up to be a max of 300% and 290%, that 10% difference might as well not even exist.

[/ QUOTE ]

The difference may be small (they also debuff for different amounts) the point is they are not identical

Fulcrum is a glaring example of where they did not make a meaningful difference in the power between AT's. That isn't the fault of defenders though and it isn't evidence that defs need a increase to their base modifier.

Increasing their base modifier wouldn't correct the issue with corrs/trollers buffing to basically the same values with fulcrum. It wouldn't fix speedboost being the same, or all the other kin powers that are too close for comfort.

[/ QUOTE ]
A base damage increase is where you would need to start to even begin balancing the support sets. Otherwise you're going to be force to scale the lacking support powers too high to compensate.

[/ QUOTE ]

Maybe. I've never really been opposed to increasing defender or corrupter damage myself.

To apply a crappy analogy:
Poorly balanced powers = wheels
Damage mod = engine

I might decide it was more important to ensure that my wheels worked correctly before I start boosting the power on the engine.

I think that is consistent to how Castle went about when he overhauled defiance and more recently the dom changes.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
In other words, for calculation purposes the avg dot ends up being represented like it is up front damage. If it was fire would be OP'd, but in actual play the dot is very good, but a bit less amazing than paper analysis shows.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's also for this same reason that Defiance isn't nearly as awesome as paper analysis indicates, nor is Sonic Blast for Blasters quite as awesome. Delayed effects are indeed less effective overall than direct effects, but they're an important factor to consider when trying to consider balance.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sure it is important. But I'd argue that what is being discussed in this thread is just dabbling in balance. It is entertaining, interesting, and quite good, but it is just the tip of the iceberg.

It is very important to be aware of peak capabilities, just as it is important to be aware of typical results both on paper and in practice.

ie. Sonic blasters are capapble of stacking 5 maybe even 6 -resist debuffs, but in practice they rarely do.

Just like fire is capable of 180+ dps, but in practice they rarely do because it requires rolling dot, which just doesn't happen outside of bosses and higher.

That's why I have said already that it is ok for fire to have so much extra damage, but if it was front-loaded it wouldn't be.


Defiance is a bit different than fire's dots, or sonic's -res in that Defiance is perpetual and fire and sonic are self contained. Definace carries on to the next foe, whereas the -res of sonic or the dot of fire does not.

All three tend to not perform as well as they do on paper, but defiance is for a different reason. Defiance is because very few people have endless targets with no pauses. Fire and sonic is because very few targets live long enough to reach near peak capability.

Your own numbers show that hasten+SO fire is only 21% better than energy. For a set with no mitigation and back loaded damage that seems perfectly fine to me compared to all upfront and huge mitigation.
*didn't use lolAR, cause it is just messed up and will hopefully do much better in an aoe comparison.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
fulcrum shift, speed boost, and siphon speed are identical for both ATs

[/ QUOTE ]

Missed this earlier on the thread.

Fulkrum Shift is not identical on both ATs, the corruptor debuffs 20% dmg and buffs 40% damage while the defender is 25%/50%, mind you, either can easily take anyone to the damage caps with enough foes.

Speed boost and siphon speed, yea those two are basically the same, defender version of siphon speed has a stronger -speed debuff but it's not like anyone cares about that debuff anyways.

[/ QUOTE ]
the difference between a Defender Fulcrum Shift and corruptor fulcrum shift is only a 10% buff.

Defender radiates one +50% from themselves and +25% per foe up to 10.
Corruptor radiates one +40% from themselves and +25% per foe up to 10.

When the numbers scale up to be a max of 300% and 290%, that 10% difference might as well not even exist.

[/ QUOTE ]

The difference may be small (they also debuff for different amounts) the point is they are not identical

Fulcrum is a glaring example of where they did not make a meaningful difference in the power between AT's. That isn't the fault of defenders though and it isn't evidence that defs need a increase to their base modifier.

Increasing their base modifier wouldn't correct the issue with corrs/trollers buffing to basically the same values with fulcrum. It wouldn't fix speedboost being the same, or all the other kin powers that are too close for comfort.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The best you can actually get from scourge is about 20.7% bonus damage and thats while fighting the biggest of the biggest HP bags in the game: GMs. And this assumes you are soloing them, too, so also an inflated number.

The link to my experiment can be found here.

Depending what you are fighting, the bonus is minimal, against even level minions its just about 7%, note this may be better against higher level minions but it requires a lot of level jump for a minion to equate the Lt, who gets about 11% out of scourge.

The flaw with a simple formulaic analysis of scourge (as I attempted to describe in my guide) is that although you may get 21.25%, in practice, even the weakest of attacks will make your target jump from something like 40% to dead or 25% to dead, this makes the optimal scenario impossible to achieve against anything but GMs, or perhaps the new Reinchsman encounter, or extremely resistant foes.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'll concede to the burst killing factor of minions and lts.

However even without scourge factored in, corruptor still ends up being 4% to 16% higher damage when using the same sets. Toss in your 7% for scourge and we're talking a minimum of 11% to 23% that is including the +dmg/-Res debuffs factored in for both ATs. If the idea was that defender +Dmg/-Res is supposed to fill the gap some between corruptors and defenders in damage, it fails heavily.

[/ QUOTE ]

The only place it fails (if at all) is when solo and it is generally only by a few percentage points. The idea was never that stronger buff/debuff of defs would close the gap until they are producing equitable damage. The idea is that as a whole the stronger buff/debuff puts them into a similar degree of risk and reward. Defs tend to be slower, but more survivable.

Whatever balance gap may exist (very debatable) on teams those few percentage points evaporate when you have 7 other teammates benefiting from an additional 7.5% -res (EF) and an additional 5% +dam each, or being 10% less likely to hit due to stronger RI.
(7.5% x 7 people x 100 damage each = extra 52.5 damage that the corr has to make up for with scourge, this cuts into w/e gap may or may not exist in a straight up comparison).

We know forcemultiplication closes any gaps extremely quickly when the stronger values are applied, just look at how easy "support" classes catch up and exceed the "damage AT"s when they cross buff/debuff.

The problem is pretty much limited to where the devs have done a crappy job and haven't made a meaningful difference in the strength of defender powers vs corr/troller/mm shared powers.

[/ QUOTE ]
Except that much of the extra damage from the better buffs/debuffs are frequently lost in over kill. This is why in many situations lower % buffs/debuffs are just as effective as the higher defender values.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'd argue that if (and I agree sometimes it does) the stronger buff/debuff is resulting in overkill then it is just as likely that scourge is as well.

If we can dismiss stronger buff/debuff as creating unnecessary damage, then it seems only logical that actual extra damage could just as easily be unnecessary. Especially given the back loaded nature of scourge inherently leading to overkill.